


Beings Made Of Light And Dust

by miss_mina_murray



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Non-Chronological, Tranquility, Warnings May Change, dorian is twice as beautiful because there's now more of him to admire, literally everyone has baggage cos that's how the inquisition rolls, solas and iron bull have the least inconspicuous daemons for being professional liars, varric valiantly tries to make friends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-10 05:11:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14730588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_mina_murray/pseuds/miss_mina_murray
Summary: A daemon is the shape of one's soul, but the language of the symbolism involved is not always clear.Viewpoints from a different plane.





	1. Somewhere The Sky Is Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Guess what the DA fandom needed? More daemon aus! 
> 
> varric has a writer's eye and is generally one of the friendlier inquisition members, so he's great for an introduction.

Varric's parents had been disappointed when Grutani had settled as a ferret, a very surfacer animal. That was just fine by Varric and Grutani, as they weren't what you'd call all that dwarven anyway. 

Varric wished sometimes that Grutani wasn't such a very dwarven name. It got them funny looks when they introduced themselves. Most dwarves, surfacer or no, gave him an odd look, glancing at Grutani and furrowing their brows at her name, the root of which probably had some meaning in the old dwarven tongue, but Varric never cared to look it up.

Any time he thought this, Grutani laughed at him and curled around his neck. 

“More fool you!” she'd tell him, nipping him on the ear. “Thinking some names belong just to dwarves and not everyone else—you sound like Mother, all bound up in what names belong to who!”

He'd laugh back at her and flick her on the ear. “Now don't compare me to Mother,” he'd tell her. “Because then I'll start looking in the mirror and seeing her face instead of mine!” 

Grutani was excellent at getting him back on track when his mind wandered, particularly towards self-pity and general misery. Sometimes he called her his common sense made manifest--'Well, Maker knows you have to keep your common sense somewhere,” Grutani would say, rolling her eyes the best a ferret could. “You certainly don't keep it inside your head.”

“Why would I, when I have you?” 

Grutani was physical with other daemons, always playing or petting or grooming. She play-fought with Harry while Sera cackled at a joke and she and Firmin chased each other around while Varric and Vivienne discussed Varric's books. She nipped at Varekanda's heels, and Cadash responded by elbowing Varric in the side. 

Diamanda hovered around Grutani's head when she chose to appear, much like Cole popped into existance right when Varric least expected it. 

Diamanda was a strange daemon, at first only the vague impression of a bird, then a shining faint image, then a dove with no name. That had only happened when they helped make Cole a bit more human, and even then it had taken several months for her to tell Cole her name. Even so, she blended in with the background and faded in, and had a habit of spooking people just like Cole did.

Grutani would hop onto Ten's horn while Varric tried to wheedle information about spycraft from Bull, and she and Valerius playfully snapped at each other while he and Dorian bantered.

Grutani could always show friendship towards others, even if it was harder for Varric. Sometimes she seemed to act entirely independent of Varric's opinions. She'd happily rode around in Zlogonje's mane even while he and Cassandra were still fighting one another three months after the Breach. Dorian and Valerius thought it was absolutely hilarious. 

“Honestly, Varric, Grutani's riding around on Zlogonje half the time—why wouldn't I think you two were--?” Dorian said.

“Don't blame me for that, Grutani's got a mind of her own.”

Grutani had been no help at all. “You know better,” she called from her current perch on Zlogonje's head. 

Varric sighed and shook his head. “My own daemon, turning against me.”

Valerius snickered. He was much ruder than Dorian, often snickering at people, and Varric had the impression that he would make faces if hawks had the capacity to make funny faces.

Cassandra steadfastly and obviously ignored them, shooting a glare at Zlogonje as if it was all his fault, somehow, which was a sentiment that Varric could understand.

“Go on, Varric, she's right there,” Valerius urged with a laugh. 

“Look, just because two people dislike each other doesn't mean they're about to kiss!” Varric insisted. 

“But you _do_ like each other,” Valerius said. He and Dorian exchanged a knowing look. 

At that, Grutani hopped off of Zlogonje and scurried over to Varric. “I can ride around on _you_ if you like,” Grutani said. Varric smirked.

“Oh, I don't think so,” Dorian cut in. “A magnificent eagle sitting on my shoulder is one thing.” Valerius preened, and Dorian stroked his head. “An eagle with a ferret around his neck? Another entirely. Like an eagle wearing a little fur—frankly bizarre.”

No one could replace the old gang, or Bianca, but Grutani made sure to get Varric to talk to others, so he didn't lose himself in the past. She was constantly urging him to friendship, even if he didn't really want to.

It didn't always work, of course.

Grutani's attempts at playing with Rogelan were met with startlement from her, and every time she tried to get close Rogelan would hop onto Solas' shoulder, her feathers ruffled with surprise. 

Solas was almost as odd as Cole in his own way. He constantly asked questions, but whenever another daemon tried to get close to Rogelan, she would look startled and wounded and flit right back to Solas. He'd stroke her feathers as if the very proximity of others unsettled them. 

It was the same way whenever Varric tried to get to know the man better. Bring up dwarven history or the Fade, and Solas was happy to talk. Ask him where he grew up, and he'd deflect, ask another question or change the subject, all while Rogelan returned to his shoulder and he smoothed her feathers. 

Hortensia was much the same, shying away from Grutani just as Blackwall shied away from Varric's conversation. Blackwall would growl a refusal, or dodge the question, and Hortensia would shove Grutani away with a paw or stride over to Blackwall's other side. 

Well, it never hurt to try. That was the great thing about Grutani—whenever Varric wanted to stop, to just stop trying and go hide somewhere far away, she managed to push him forward.


	2. A Quiet Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another oneshot, or; the only thing to scare the absolute unreasoning bejeezus out of solas

Solas' Rogelan had long ago taken her shape, so long ago that he could hardly remember it. It had been before he had been Fen'harel, before the wars of Elvhenan and certainly before he had awoken in Thedas.

It was both good and bad that Rogelan had the shape of a bird. Good, because among those who knew Solas as a mage, only her size was unusual. Bad, because it set them apart as a mage and a mage's daemon, when they might want to keep that less than obvious. Not all mage daemons were birds, and not all bird daemons belonged to mages, but most were.

As it was, it was hard enough that Rogelan was so large, a huge condor with a wicked beak and sharp claws. Most mages didn't have daemons that were so large or vicious-looking. 

The culture that one lived in influenced what kind of shape one's daemon settled into. Solas had witnessed it before—the daemons of the downtrodden reflected what those above thought of them, and those of the powerful reflected what those below did. There were a thousand other little variables that affected what one's daemon settled as, but cultural ideas were one such thing. He had witnessed the changes in 'fashion' of daemon, in the Fade, the differences in daemons as clear as the differences in ideas over time.

As it was, the majority of mages in the south were Circle mages. The downtrodden, their birds were quiet, or harmless, or easy to conceal, or fast. 

Rogelan, the huge, beautiful creature she was, was none of those things. They got stares whenever they ventured too close to civilization, and of course Solas couldn't go without her, so they avoided such places as much as they could. Not that they would want to go very close to most people anyway.

In Thedas, everything was new and strange and terrible. They resolved to fix it as soon as possible. 

One thing that was stable, or so it seemed to them, was that people's relationships with their daemons had not changed. Everyone had a different bond, but he and Rogelan did not stand out in their treatment of one another. When she landed heavily on his shoulder, there was only surprise at her size and shape, not their closeness. Others pulled their daemons close for comfort, just as he did, and others' daemons pressed close to their people, just as she did. 

Of course, the size and shape of his daemon mattered little in Haven, where all that mattered was that he had magic.

They walked calmly into the camp, and were inevitably met with hostility. Solas proclaimed their intention to help, and panicked as they were, the inhabitants of Haven had little options than to let them help. 

Then, he and Rogelan were faced with Seeker Pentaghast and her lion daemon, who growled at Rogelan, his mane making him look larger than he really was. Next to them was a hooded redhead with the most menacing nug demon Solas or Rogelan had ever seen sitting on her shoulder. 

“Why are you here?” Pentaghast asked. 

“We wish to provide any aid we can,” Solas explained. “The Breach threatens everyone. We could not stand by.” 

Pentaghast narrowed her eyes, and her daemon growled again. Then a shock from the Breach shook everyone, and she and the redhead exchanged worried looks as shouts from the people outside reached them.

“Very well,” the redhead said. “We do have one problem that might use the assistance of a mage.” 

They brought them to the sole survivor of the Breach, a dwarven woman and her daemon who had walked out of the Temple unharmed but for the mark on the woman's hand.

Rogelan bated when she saw the woman, the brilliant green mark obvious in its meaning. Solas smoothed the feathers on her back, trying to quell his own nerves. 

“Well?” Pentaghast demanded, her daemon baring his teeth. 

“We shall see what we can do,” Solas assured her. Rogelan hopped off of Solas' shoulder and moved close to the dwarven woman's daemon, just as asleep as the woman was. She peered at the deepstalker daemon intently, dark eyes roving over every inch. Solas didn't know how to tell the difference between a male or a female deepstalker, so he couldn't tell the sex of the woman's daemon. 

Pentaghast watched as Solas tried every healing spell he could think of to wake the woman up. Rogelan continued to examine the woman's daemon, but found nothing obviously wrong. 

“The mark is hurting her,” Solas said at last. “It is connected to the Breach—the magic flows from one to the other.”

The lion made a low noise in his throat, and Pentaghast's eyes went wide.

“Could she be the one who did it?” she demanded.

“Possibly,” Solas said slowly. “Not necessarily--”

Pentaghast was already leaving, unwilling to listen further. 

“It seems has decided already,” Rogelan commented.

“Perhaps,” Solas spent little time considering the Seeker's motivations. They had a larger problem at the moment.

They continued to examine the woman, but eventually they needed to find help. Their ability to heal had been weakened with the sleep of Uthenera, like many of their other abilities. Even the distance Rogelan could travel from Solas had been shortened.

It was upon searching for assistance—books, herbs, another mage, anything useful—that they encountered Ambassador Montilyet and her daemon.

Ambassador Montilyet was the first one to give them even the attempt at a smile, her lynx daemon jittery and nervous beside her, but she at least tried to be polite. It was very kind of her, and spoke highly of her character to maintain such etiquette even under these trying circumstances.

“There are a few other mages who survived,” she said, and brought them to Minaeve, a tiny elf girl with a hummingbird daemon who hovered beside her head. 

Minaeve knew more of artifacts than she did of healing, which meant she could identify the mark on the dwarven woman as being likely to have been caused by an artifact, but little else.

“I'm sorry,” she looked away, shoulders hunched. Her daemon, when not flitting about in agitation, hid behind her neck, just under her collar. He kept far away from Rogelan, flinching when she looked at him. “We don't know much about healing at all.”

“What of herbalism?” Solas asked. “Or perhaps there is an apothecary, or another healer--?”

I can find the apothecary--” she paused. “And--Helisma ought to know a bit about things like that,” she exchanged a glance with her daemon. “Let me and find them—oh,” she paused as her daemon twittered about her head. “Helisma's Tranquil, but don't let that worry you. She's very nice and patient.”

Solas inclined his head, giving Minaeve a tiny, encouraging smile, which she did not return as she left. 

He knew in theory what Tranquil mages were—somehow, their magic had been separated from them. A horror concocted by this modern age, to be sure. He had not yet gotten a straight answer about what precisely was done, and Tranquil had no dreams, like dwarves, so he couldn't see anything from their perspective. He hadn't yet had the opporunity to meet one in person either.

As they waited, poring over a book of healing spells, a shudder passed through Rogelan.

“What's wrong?” he could feel her fear, a sudden terror of something approaching—sometimes she could feel danger before he did, so he locked a barrier spell just below the skin of his fingers, in case the Seeker had changed her mind about them.

“I'm not certain,” she looked about, dark eyes fixed on the door. “I think that there's something...awful...coming."

Solas got to his feet. “Is it dangerous?” 

“I don't know.”

Solas wrapped his fingers around his staff. Rogelan's revulsion and anxiety made his stomach clenched, but he heard no sounds of fighting or anythings imilar. The Breach had not let out another shock recently. 

The door opened, and Minaeve stepped in, followed by a tall blonde woman. Rogelan made a tiny, startled noise in the back of her throat, and pressed close to Solas' side. 

“Solas, this is Helisma,” Minaeve said. “We'll be back in a minute, we don't know where Adan is, but he's got to be close,” Minaeve and her daemon left again. If they had still been there, what happened next might have been avoided. At it was, Rogelan and Solas were alone with Helisma.

He noticed the sunburst mark on her forehead. The mark of the Tranquil. He disapproved of tattoos of many kinds, and a brand like that was one of the more vicious ones he'd seen.

“Minaeve said you needed my assistance,” Helisma said, her voice flat and her eyes glassy.

Solas nodded. “She said you had knowledge of herbalism.” curiously, Helisma's daemon had not made an appearance, and there was something about the woman that seemed terribly wrong, terribly hollow, not only her lack of magic.

“Some,” Helisma nodded. She moved to the bookshelf at the end of the room and began selecting volumes. 

Something itched at the back of his mind, and Rogelan began to tremble again, slightly.

“How does one become Tranquil?” Solas asked Helisma, a thought striking him. 

“I am not certain,” Helisma said, turning back to the table and setting her books down. 

Solas still saw no daemon. No insect crawled out from her sleeve or collar, no snake wound around her arm, nothing moved in her pockets or belt-pouch. Rogelan pressed closer, and his stomach began to churn as a horrible suspicion began to creep up on him.

“It involves a great deal of lyrium, a dangerous amount to anyone who is not a mage or a Templar. It also involves the severance of the bond between mage and daemon.”

Solas' heart felt cold, and he stepped back, staring at Helisma, realizing exactly what it was about her that felt so horribly wrong. 

Her daemon was gone. She wasn't just a hole in the world because of her lack of magic, it was because her daemon was gone. 

She looked at him, expression impassive. 

He stared at her. Rogelan began to shake again, the utter revulsion sweeping from him to her and back again. 

“I would have taken him with me when the Circles fell, but we were separated. He was kept apart from me, and due to our separation, we will have a difficult time finding each other again.”

The blandness of it was horrific, and Solas moved to stroke Rogelan's feathers, almost to reassure himself she was still there. 

“You were...kept apart?”

“Sometimes, a Tranquil being near a daemon when they have been separated will have an adverse affect. The Tranquil will become less efficient, and sometimes erratic. We can visit, as daemons are soothed by our presence.” 

Solas really wanted to be sick. Rogelan continued to shake, almost as badly as when they had first risen and were shaking off the shock of Uthenera. 

“Excuse us,” he managed, and he and Rogelan left Helisma standing there in the room. They sped right by Minaeve as they left, and they thought they heard her call after them, but they ignored her. Rogelan pressed her head against his cheek. He trembled too, horror curling inside his chest. 

They left the Chantry, to go lean against the back wall of one of the cabins, out of sight.

He held Rogelan close to him, stroking her feathers, trying desperately to soothe her but he was as frightened as she was. Their horror mixed in together, a black icy pit at the heart of them, pure disgust and terror and guilt all swirling into one. She pressed her head against his chest, making low sounds of distress in her throat. 

The light of the Breach overhead just made everything worse. Another symbol of everything terribly wrong. 

He'd never met anyone whose daemon was cut away before. Even the Evanuris didn't do anything like that, and he remembered with a start that Tranquil were mages, they just did that to mages, and he held Rogelan even tighter, feeling her shudder with the idea of it. Not his own soul, not the last thing he had left. 

“We would _never_ let them do that to us,” he murmured to her softly. “We would kill them all first. We would _die_ first.”

“We have to fix it,” she murmured back. “We have to make it right. This should never have happened.”

He nodded and stroked her feathers till they both were calm again. 

Helisma was just another reminder that they could not become close to this place. No matter how it might seem, this world was full of shadows and monsters, and must never come to pass. He didn't understand how they could walk by Helisma and not feel--that yawning blackness, the gulf where her soul should have been. 

Finally, they returned to the Chantry. They could not stay out here forever. The dwarven woman was not going to recover on her own, and the problem would not be fixed if they did not focus on it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a california condor is an absolutely massive bird with a nine-foot wingspan and a bald head, like a buzzard's. rogelan is a normal daemon, as in this universe (as in the unwoven tapestry), solas was born more or less normally. 
> 
> for clarity; the daemon's bond and magic are two separate entities (as in the original dark materials, witches and those who use magic are different from everyday individuals with daemons), however, modern thedas doesn't distinguish between the two. 
> 
> essentially what the rite of tranquility does is traumatize the magic out of someone--a severed individual is also extremely obedient, lacking imagination, fear, and other emotions, as well as the lack of ability to use their magic. 
> 
> it is doubly convenient for the chantry, both to quell a threat, and have an obedient servant, much like the church in the original dark materials, but lacking the dust context.


	3. Those Who Wish To Forget

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more on tranquility.

Cullen had held the daemons of others in his hands before. 

All Templars had. No one but Templars and mages knew, but the great taboo was very often broken amongst the Circles. 

A mage knew the power one could have by catching and holding a Templar's daemon, and more than once a mage had tried to escape by holding one hostage.

And the templars knew the power of it, too. Not just for making mages comply, no, there was another reason.

The ritual of tranquility required the mage and their daemon to be separated. Often this was difficult, as a mage's daemon was almost always a bird, and they could easily fly away and hover out of reach for some time, giving the mage time to escape or fight. 

So they had to be caught.

Cullen distinctly remembered catching a little sparrow in his hands, and when he did the mage went completely limp in his grip. The sparrow had felt like a bird, warm and heavy in his hands, just like his Maryala. Maryala had ducked and hid her head, and Cullen could feel her revulsion at it, at what they were doing.

“We have to,” he told her later. “It was for his own good.”

He held the sparrow as the mage was dragged into the ritual room. At last, the screaming stopped, and the sparrow grew cold. Not dead, separation was far less likely to kill teenagers and adults than it was to kill children, but cold all the same, lifeless and translucent. She made soft chirrups and peeps in her throat, sad noises that made Maryala whimper. 

“Where's Karan?” the daemon murmured, terrified and lost, unable to feel her person anymore. “where is he?”

“He's coming,” Cullen assured her, but he really didn't know for certain. They tended to keep Tranquil daemons away from them—sometimes odd things happened when a Tranquil's daemon was close by. 

True enough, the Tranquil never came back for his daemon, and Cullen was directed to place her in a cage and take her to where the other Tranquil daemons were. The Tranquil daemons were kept in the same room that phylacteries were kept in, and Cullen felt sorry for them, locked away in the cold. 

“We shouldn't,” Maryala whispered as they left the room. She shivered and Cullen scooped her up in his arms, holding her close. “We shouldn't have. It's _wrong_.”

Cullen shook his head. “No, no,” he told her. “No, no—it wasn't, it wasn't.”

“It _was_.”

He hushed her and soothed her until she no longer shook and protested, and then they made themselves forget about it. 

They were good at that.


	4. The Road To Utopia

In Cassandra's mind there was the memory of a gleaming blade. 

Sometimes she'd dream of it, terrible nightmares of a silver, shining blade that was about to come between her and her Zlogonje, to sever them and pull them apart forever. She'd wake sobbing in the night, reaching out to Zlogonje to find him reaching for her, putting his huge head in her lap. They'd shake and shake, and she would press her ear to his massive chest and reassure herself that he was still there.

She never knew what the dreams meant. She pushed them away with the dawn, refused to think of them as anything but an irrational fear, and she had no patience for nightmares and paranoia, not when there were so many real fears and horrors to be had.

Zlogonje was there with her, and every time she felt her mind wandering towards the silver blade, she'd stroke her fingers through his golden mane, and he'd press his muzzle against her side. 

“Come now,” he would say. “We have work to do.”

And then came the Lord Seeker, and the book of the Order's rites and rituals and secrets. 

There _had_ been a silver blade, a real one meant to sunder them apart from each other. It had come between them for a moment, just a moment, then a spirit had come and stitched their thread back together before they knew what had happened, and they called her a Seeker for it. Said it was the Maker's doing. 

“They were wrong to have done it,” Zlogonje insisted as they sat up late one night, reading the book again. “It was only magic, and it hurt us, and they called it the will of the Maker!"

“They cannot have been like that at first,” Cassandra frantically thumbed through the pages, trying to find evidence of the Order, the Seekers she had come to know. What was revealed in the book seemed like something else entirely, and she was not familiar with it at all. 

They must have been true, sometime. It can't all have been lies. 

She looked and looked, but it seemed the Seekers' heart had been rotten. 

She could not be consoled. How could this be? Of course the mages and Templars had rebelled—the Seekers had given them absolutely no reason not to. 

Cassandra thought of the yawning black chasm in her dreams, the terrible silver blade, and the emptiness where Zlogonje should have been, and her heart hurt for the Tranquil. 

They would rebuild it, she decided. They would rebuild the order and this time they would build it better. 

Zlogonje had his doubts, but he always did. He was her doubt made manifest. 

“A building rotted in its foundation will never stand,” he told her. “How are we to build a house made on this?” 

“We acknowledge our history, we do not fear it,” she told him. 

“Nor did they,” he nodded towards the book, always on a prominent place near her bedside. “They were so unafraid of history they did it all, regardless of whether they should have or not.” 

“There must be an Order,” Cassandra said. “We cannot let the world fall to chaos. We will not.”

“No,” he agreed. “But don't you remember what the Lord Seeker said? We were the ones who made this world. Us. We cannot build a new one until we understand what happened to the old one.” 

Cassandra paused. 

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. We cannot make the mistakes that were made in the past.” she pulled out paper and pen, and began to write. 

“What are you doing?” he came to her elbow and watched her.

“A record of the Inquisition. So we will always know what happened.” 

She felt nothing but satisfaction from him, and his doubt eased. 

At last, perhaps this was the correct path. She took her free hand and ran her finges through his mane. 

Maker willing, no one would be separated again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zlogonje is a Serbian name that means 'expels evil.' i've always seen Nevarra as a bit of a mishmash of Slavic and Mediterranean countries, mostly aided by Cass' faith and obscurely eastern-european accent.

**Author's Note:**

> from smallest to largest, here's everyone's daemon:
> 
> Leliana--female nug, Delphyrin  
> Sera—female sable, Harry  
> Varric--female ferret, Grutani  
> Cullen—female cocker spaniel, Maryala  
> Cole--female dove, Diamanda  
> Vivienne—male raven, Firmin  
> Dorian—male golden eagle, Valerius  
> Blackwall--female black labrador, Hortensia  
> Cadash--female deepstalker, Varekanda  
> Josephine—male lynx, Paunado  
> Solas—female california condor, Rogelan  
> Cassandra—male lion, Zlogonge  
> Iron Bull—female druffalo, Ten


End file.
